Aspects of the present invention generally relate to the fields of networked computerized industrial control, automation systems, and networked computerized systems utilized to monitor, log, and display relevant manufacturing/production events and associated data, and supervisory level control and manufacturing information systems. Such systems generally execute above a regulatory control layer in a process control system to provide guidance to lower level control elements such as, by way of example, programmable logic controllers or distributed control systems. Such systems are also employed to acquire, manage, store, and preserve historical information relating to processes and their associated outputs.
Typical industrial processes are extremely complex and receive substantially greater volumes of data and information than any human could possibly digest in raw form. By way of example, it is not unheard of to have thousands of sensors and control elements (e.g., valve actuators) monitoring/controlling aspects of a multi-stage process within an industrial plant. These sensors are of varied type and report on varied characteristics of the process. Their outputs are similarly varied in the meaning of their measurements, in the amount of data sent for each measurement, and in the frequency of their measurements. As regards the latter, for accuracy and to enable quick response, some of these sensors/control elements take one or more measurements every second. Multiplying a single sensor/control element by thousands of sensors/control elements (a typical industrial control environment) results in an overwhelming volume of data flowing into the manufacturing information and process control system. Sophisticated data management techniques have been developed to store and maintain the large volumes of data generated by such system. Interfacing with systems that store such data typically includes using special-purpose programming languages with strict syntax regulations regarding queries for data stored on such systems. By way of example, a query based on the Structured Query Language (SQL) is required to adhere to a strict four-part naming convention. Moreover, retrieved data is displayed in a tabular format that does not efficiently convey potential problems associated with the process.